International library open day
THOUSANDS of great reads in English, French, German and Dutch, will be available on the anniversaries of Shakespeare's and Cervantes' deaths.
Saint George's Day is not just an English phenomenon – the north-eastern region of Cataluña also celebrates April 23, where the dragon-slayer is known as Sant Jordi. There, tradition dictates you gift your loved ones a book, a flower, or both.
Although it's known as the 'Saint George Book Fair', the reason for this is because April 23 is the date when, in the year 1616, two of Europe's greatest literary legends died.
They actually died 10 days apart but the same date of death is recorded is because England was still using the old Julian calendar, whilst Spain had already moved onto the Gregorian calendar we use today.
Jávea and Orihuela Costa are amongst the places holding special activities to mark what is now know as 'book week'.
Jávea town hall has organised an open day in the international reading section of its public library. From 10.00 to 13.00 on Friday, April 21, you can find out more about this excellent service that lets you read a selection of over 8,000 works in English, French, German and Dutch.
You can still stock up on reads whenever Jávea library is open, but to get more information, or find out about what's on
the shelves in your chosen language, the volunteers who run the multilingual department will be at the open day.
The books there include Richard Osman's detective novels, Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun, Michelle Obama's autobiography Becoming, and Jonathan Franzen's Corrections.
The international section was created in 2004 when Dutch-speaking local residents Cornelis Romeijn and Jan Carel van den Burg decided the public needed some great reads that were not in Spanish, and donated a haul of their own books.
Now, a number of expats, who are native speakers of the four foreign languages, work as volunteer librarians, each for a couple of hours a week.
The Orihuela Costa activities have been organised with local schools and include a book exchange, an exhibition of children's work on the theme, readings of Cervantes and Shakespeare, and live music.
These will be taking place on Sunday, April 23, from 12.00 to 19.00 at Los Cucalos restaurant on Avenida de Montezenia.